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The federal government is assessing the feasibility of a filtering scheme that will see customers of major Internet service providers (ISPs) blocked from accessing overseas-based gambling services that are not licensed to operate in Australia.

Guidance for Australian Securities and Investments Commission staff on the use of Section 313 (3) of the Telecommunications Act to block Australians' access to particular websites or online services are currently in draft form and awaiting sign-off from ASIC’s legal office, some 10 months after the government issued whole-of-government guidelines.

With the government yet to finalise whole-of-government guidelines for the use by federal agencies of Section 313(3) of the Telecommunications Act to block Australians’ access to websites, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has moved to develop internal guidelines on its use of the power.

Almost three years after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) discovered that notices it had issued to a number of telecommunications carriers had led to the erroneous blocking of hundreds of thousands of websites for some Internet users, the government has yet to develop guidelines for use of the controversial legal mechanism.

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